Fountain Valley Mall : Truce Called After Voters OK Southpark

To build or not to build a retail center on a strawberry field. That was the election question in Fountain Valley, and the answer Wednesday was yes.

Following Tuesday night’s approval of Measure A by a 3-2 margin, both boosters and opponents of Southpark, the 140-acre mall on the ballot, decided Wednesday to call a truce. It is time to mend the fence, they said, to live with the verdict of the voters. Better not to divide the community further, they agreed.

“While we still are not in support of the project . . . the people have spoken,” said Scott Green, treasurer of Citizens for Maintaining the Quality of Life in Fountain Valley, a residential group that opposed the project.

“We made our effort, we wanted to allow the citizens to vote on it, and they did. And only time will tell if that was the right choice.”

Fountain Valley Mayor Barbara Brown, who supported the mall, expressed relief Wednesday that the election is over.

“I feel like I’ve been hit with a Mack truck,” Brown said. “I feel like a huge boulder has been lifted from my shoulders. It’s been so many months of this (contention) in this city.”

While the election results are not expected to be certified until today, county Registrar of Voters Donald Tanney said, the unofficial tally shows that Fountain Valley voters approved the Southpark Measure 4,412 to 2,927. That was 60.1% favoring Southpark, and 39% opposing it.

About 25% of the city’s 29,834 registered voters--or 7,357 people--went to the polls Tuesday, more than half of them before 2 p.m., Tanney said. He had anticipated a much lower voter turnout.

The larger-than-expected turnout may have changed the direction of the race, both sides concluded, with Southpark supporters figuring that they needed to get at least 10% of the voters to the polls.

Southpark will be built over 15 years on a 140-acre parcel bounded by Slater and Warner avenues, Euclid Street and the Santa Ana River. Retail stores will be developed over 30 acres of the land, with the remaining 110 acres to be used for light industrial and research and development uses.

The property is owned by the Sakioka family, longtime county farmers, and was zoned for light manufacturing. The City Council voted Sept. 2 to change the property’s land use to planned community designation, which would allow retail stores and, most importantly, the Price Club.

But a successful referendum drive by the Quality of Life group forced the election, and the San Diego-based membership discount store chain balked at the community squabble, deciding to remain at its Santa Ana location a mile from the Southpark site.

Decidedly undramatic as elections go, the balloting climaxed months of rancor between homeowner groups that opposed the project and a low-key City Council that unanimously endorsed it.

A member of the opposition group who had threatened a City Council recall drive in the moments after the results were announced late Tuesday was said by Smith to be “on his own. . . . We have no interest in dividing the community further.”

Certification Expected

Brown said the City Council will most likely certify the election at its March 1 meeting. Certification is required before any building permits are issued. In the meantime, she said, she has already talked with the Price Club and hopes that the city can woo the store back to Fountain Valley.

City officials have maintained that Proposition 13 has restricted the city’s biggest source of income, property taxes, and that retail business is an ideal way to recoup those losses. They said the estimated $1.5 million a year that the Southpark project with a Price Club-type store could bring is essential to Fountain Valley if the city is to continue providing current levels of services like street sweeping, road improvements, sidewalk repair and adequate police and fire protection.

Traffic was the primary point of contention. Opponents said 10 times more cars would use Fountain Valley’s roads because of the project. Foes also said the city’s budget woes were greatly exaggerated.

However, Smith said Wednesday that the residents group is concentrating now on working with the city to “reduce the problems we see coming from this project.”

He added: “We’ll live with the verdict.”